The Listening Post Takes Your Questions To City Hall

Every week WWNO's Listening Post project asks questions about local news in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and reports back on the community's response.

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Click here to listen to this week's Listening Post segment.

This week we asked Listening Posters to share some of the problems they see around the city — and a few solutions, too. The most commonly mentioned problems were:

Crime/violence

Public transportation

Streets/potholes

Lack of street lighting

New Orleans City Councilmember LaToya Cantrell.

We also asked if participants had any questions they’d like us to send over to City Hall.

ListeningPosters texted us, left voicemails, and recorded their questions at our recording devices at Norman Mayer library in Gentilly and Keller library in Broadmoor.

We sat down with city councilmember LaToya Cantrell and asked her YOUR questions.

Click below to listen to our entire interview:

Cantrell says that she believes the key to reducing violence is improving the overall health of the community.

"I think that violence is a public health issue. I think it relates to the environments that we live in. Whether it's saturated with blight, overgrown lots. I think it's about value, how we have a culture of folks who just don't feel valued. They don't feel worthy. And that's a huge problem," she says.

She also provided some insight on the reduced public transportation services.

James Harris from the New Zion City Preservation Association talks to our Listening Post about the city's biggest problems.

Credit Kate Richardson

"In the post-Katrina environment our public transit system was totally devastated and went to the toilet," she says. "We were running 300 buses pre-Katrina, and we're running 100 now," she says. "In regards to the reality, the money isn't there. It cannot be as robust as it was pre-Katrina because the ridership is not there."

She says she'd like to see more community engagement.

"It's not government, but it's people stepping up to the plate and not being afraid to care not only about themselves, but about the community they live in."

The New Zion City Preservation Association is a neighborhood group that's meeting Cantrell's challenge. Their small community on the edges of Gerttown and Broadmoor lost a lot of residents after Katrina and is still struggling to get back on its feet.

We recently took our mobile Listening Post to a cleanup day in Zion City. Residents answered our questions of the week and shared their questions for City Council.

After responding to your questions Councilmember Cantrell had a questions for our listeners:

"What are (you) willing to do that's above and beyond what we've all done?"

Next week we're talking about the tourism and service industries in Louisiana. Take a look at our Questions of the Week. When you text or call our number (504-224-5314) you'll receive these questions on your phone. You can answer by text or voicemail. We collect answers all week, then pick a few to highlight on our radio segment.

Here's an example of a response we got via voicemail. You can respond this way by texting 2 in response to our text message questions. You'll get a call that will prompt you to record your message.